SGA: Allies-No Man's Land-Misbegotten

[SFDebris]

I've put up a mirror on BC. I wanted to avoid using it because of its limitations, but I just can't afford to lose the time it'd take to re-edit this right now. You may need to ctrl-f5 to get the new video to show up on the Stargate page.

[clearspira]

I've put up a mirror on BC. I wanted to avoid using it because of its limitations, but I just can't afford to lose the time it'd take to re-edit this right now. You may need to ctrl-f5 to get the new video to show up on the Stargate page.

Have you thought about putting a border around the video? That seems to be how a lot of creators get around Youtube's bots.

[SFDebris]

I've put up a mirror on BC. I wanted to avoid using it because of its limitations, but I just can't afford to lose the time it'd take to re-edit this right now. You may need to ctrl-f5 to get the new video to show up on the Stargate page.

Have you thought about putting a border around the video? That seems to be how a lot of creators get around Youtube's bots.

Tried it, and altering the size, and adjusting speed, and chopping and shuffling clips. It's gotten pretty thorough, I'm surprised it took a few days before it finally triggered, usually it's immediate.

[Ghilz]

I feel like comparing the Ori to the System Lords does the System Lords a disservice. The System lords at least have personalities, costumes.

The Ori are never actually seen beyond "weird flame special effects". The Priors are interchangeable. It leaves Adria who swings wildly between "Mommy issues" and "Generic Evil Overlord #485492"

OK, so when Chuck is talking about the possible outcomes and how probably the only method conceivable for peace is changing the Wraith so they don't need to feed on humans, and then he says "but what about the opposite?" how in the ever-loving what does he completely skip the thought of changing humans so that we can survive being fed on? I literally thought that was exactly what he was implying. It was the very first thought that came to mind.

I mean isn't the feeding they absorb the very lifeforce? How do you make people survive that. Have infinite lifeforce?

I guess "Immortality" would be a cure to a lot of stuff.

[Freeverse]

I feel like comparing the Ori to the System Lords does the System Lords a disservice. The System lords at least have personalities, costumes.

The Ori are never actually seen beyond "weird flame special effects". The Priors are interchangeable. It leaves Adria who swings wildly between "Mommy issues" and "Generic Evil Overlord #485492"

OK, so when Chuck is talking about the possible outcomes and how probably the only method conceivable for peace is changing the Wraith so they don't need to feed on humans, and then he says "but what about the opposite?" how in the ever-loving what does he completely skip the thought of changing humans so that we can survive being fed on? I literally thought that was exactly what he was implying. It was the very first thought that came to mind.

I mean isn't the feeding they absorb the very lifeforce? How do you make people survive that. Have infinite lifeforce?

I guess "Immortality" would be a cure to a lot of stuff.

Hey, so, quick trivia question for you... What the fuck is lifeforce? No, really, what the fuck are they even talking about? is it souls? are we magic now?

Ok, I apologize for the condescending attitude... it's only halfway for humor, the other half being that this plot point is very dumb and I hate it. Which is not your fault. Stargate has always been firmly in the camp of "sufficiently advanced technology", so I'm willing to accept "we just don't know", but if the real explanation is "souls" or "spirit" or any supernatural shit, I am not on board.

I like to think that they're feeding on the energy produced by our mitochondria, and that a side affect is that our telomeres are shortened in the process, which is why the process is similar to aging. I know that's all fanwank, but it fits far better with what preceded it.

I mean, we're not talking about real creatures here, so we don't need to even know exactly how it works. What we do know is that the process rapidly ages the subject and then kills them. I'm suggesting that whatever it is about the process disrupts our life functions in some physical, observable way. So, the super scientists with their super scientific city can use their super science smarts to figure out what it is that disrupts our lifeforce, and find some way to allow the feeding to occur without the disruption.

I do feel like someone is going to bring up ascension, which I haven't forgotten, but that is a complex process that involves the mind being transferred to a different state of being. I don't think it's controversial to say that it is meant to be at least in part, technologically based. Not magic. It just looks like it. That's honestly the epitome of Stargate, Clarke's Third Law; The Series.

[FlynnTaggart]

I mentioned this briefly in another post, but what I'm suggesting is that humans might be modified to reduce the effects of being fed on by wraith, or even nullify them entirely. I don't think this is unreasonable given how nebulous the whole "life force" explanation is, and the fact that in the actual show they pull the equally silly trick of turning Wraiths human. Also, if I knew there was an entire race of people who would die without draining humans of their energy, I would absolutely allow myself to be fed on if there were a way to do so without a danger to myself. I would even trade years of my life, if the exchange rate were high enough. Honestly, even if it were as low as 1:2 I'd consider donating a year or two.

Now, the wraith, as they are, do not fit into these conditions. They take your entire life, and it seems like they need to feed quite often when they're not in stasis. But if there were a way to inoculate ourselves to the lifespan-shortening effects of the Wraith, and there were Wraith who sought peace with us, I don't think it would be unreasonable to make the try.

And I bring up vampires from other media because this is a review, coming from someone who has been exposed to popular culture, and it was a relevant comparison. Like... I don't think the Wraith ought to behave exactly like other vampires, because that's such a broad category that I wouldn't even know what that would mean. But also... You almost sound like you're saying "These aren't like your books, these are REAL vampires!" I mean, I'm sure you're fully aware of the difference between reality and fiction... but Stargate is just as fictional as any other T.V. show. The Wraith could have been any which way the writers thought of. They could have been deathly afraid of crossing water, or compulsively counted any sets of tiny objects they came across. It's all equal. I'm saying this as something that could have been in the story, I'm not saying that it was.

Even if there was a way to reduce the need to feed for speed most people probably wouldn't be down for some chest sucking especially if it was going to take away their life force even partially in particular the people of the Pegasus galaxy who have been moo'ing for the Wraith for centuries. To give peace a chance it would need to be voluntary and I doubt many would be selfless enough to literally give up life and I don't think its a morally dubious thing to not want to do.

My point about "vampire media" was not to make a "REAL vampires" point but to allude to the trend in vampire media where people, especially nubile young women, want to be drained like a juice box by the vampires, there is some erotic pleasure in the act that it becomes like a "death by snu-snu" sort of thing for them. Most people IRL or even in a somewhat more realistic tv show are probably not going to be like some busty vampire victim throwing themselves at the Wraith to get their lifeforce taken, in a somewhat realistic setting most people are going to be thinking thats hot. Maybe some Twilight and Anne Rice fans, Team Edward fans are going to be disappointed when there is no space werewolves (that I recall).

I think they tried that once in the show to make it seem like getting the suck was fun or addictive with Ronan getting addicted to feeding or something but for the most part it seems like a horrific painful and dehumanizing act even when it doesn't kill. I think the Wraith not needing to kill would be like some tall aliens showing up with a book "To Serve Man" but asking everyone to donate a chunk of their thigh to make human tendies for alien NEETs, still wouldn't be alot of volunteers especially if it was after kidnapping some people to make into meals.

Right, this is why I said it wouldn't magically solve everything. And something else I said in another post was that, as a solution, it is no better or worse than changing the Wraith to be able to survive without feeding on humans. They are very different approaches, but both fail to address the core issue.

The wraith are just so fucking boring - I mean, not interested in peace. They don't value human life other than as something to be used. If they didn't need to feed on humans, they could just wipe them all out and never have to think about the possibility of uprising again. I mean, they would probably enslave everyone instead, for their own pleasure rather than as food. And if humans could negate the effects with some kind of super science, then they would just keep on keeping on, maybe killing the person they fed on anyway, just for the funsies. Though it would be a valuable tool for fighting them.

But hypothetically, with a more interesting version of the Wraith, it could have led to a story about trying to make peace with the things that go bump in the night. Which we only partially got in the show. There were some attempts, but other than Michael, the show is basically of the position that it was pure optimism, and that you have to kill the baddies even if sometimes it's hard and blah blah blah. Typical 2000s action show rhetoric.

Don't get me wrong, the conflict with the Wraith enables some great character work for the heroes at points, and some cool stand-alone stories, and at least they weren't boring and invincible like the Ori. But I wish we could have gotten more out of the actual villains.

Momentarily ignoring the "Wraith are evil" thing that was my point, it still doesn't solve the Wraith issue compared to the potential other solutions. Dialing back their need to feed to where they only gotta kill far less if at all still keeps the humans as cattle for the Wraith even if the Wraith weren't evil. They still would act as parasites feeding off of people, forcing them to serve them so they can get their McHuman meals even if they weren't "bow before me". Its still keeping people enslaved even if it was a more benign slavery.

But yeah, the Wraith are evil. Maybe its the result of their need to feed or maybe its just a natural personality issue but they are. To solve the problem of the Wraith the Wraith need to change, they are the problem. Removing their need to feed means that while they might still be evil the biggest reason for it is gone, they might still want to enslave or dominate people but it won't be something they HAVE to do. Peace in some form could be achieved even if its a Go'uld sort of peace where most are wiped out other then the few who reject being evil but the possibility is still there. No peace can be achieved if they remain vampires because even if they weren't evil they still have zero choice, its literally eat or die same as everyone else.

Though I definitely agree it would have been far more interesting to have the Wraith less pure evil. As I alluded to in another post I think it would have been interesting to see other sides of the Wraith, some that aren't so evil, some that are fairly benign if not symbiotic towards humans. Would make things more interesting if the Wraith weren't just completely "eat and kill", that some were their version of PETA (in concept, if they really were they'd kill far more humans then the regular Wraith).

[Beastro]

Having the Wraith as cartoon villains same as the Go'uld I think made them suffer. They weren't as interesting or as threatening as the System Lords, definitely weren't as cool looking. Having them as more morally grey would be kinda interesting, kinda play into the "tragic vampire" aspect some vampire works have. They have to kill to feed but maybe don't like it, feel bad about killing sometimes, sometimes they convince themselves humans aren't sapient, and yes some go full in and enjoy it because of the power aspect.

For me the problem goes deeper in that the original premise of the Goa'uld was ok, but the show quickly outgrew it wanting to broaden its scope and was hampered by how two dimensional they were. I think it would have been better to go for a gentler, nuanced approach where you don't have specific gods, but Goa'uld in archetypal positions with possibly them fighting for the overall archetypal roles.

By those things, I mean in the Aphrodite/Venus/Hathor/Astarte equivalency sense, possibly with several Goa'uld competing for the same position to claim the title. I do know that would throw off SG-1s fundamental focus as a show, which was straight of liberation of false gods. That could open up a social dynamic where the Goa'uld are as much tempted and beholden to the same social system by trying to appease to the mindset of the subject populations that desire such gods who wouldn't welcome their worldview being destroyed by the Tauri.

Simply put, if Ra was killed, another Goa'uld that would come in claiming to be Ra would be welcomed.

[Ghilz]

Hey, so, quick trivia question for you... What the fuck is lifeforce? No, really, what the fuck are they even talking about? is it souls? are we magic now?

Ok, I apologize for the condescending attitude... it's only halfway for humor, the other half being that this plot point is very dumb and I hate it. Which is not your fault. Stargate has always been firmly in the camp of "sufficiently advanced technology", so I'm willing to accept "we just don't know", but if the real explanation is "souls" or "spirit" or any supernatural shit, I am not on board.

I like to think that they're feeding on the energy produced by our mitochondria, and that a side affect is that our telomeres are shortened in the process, which is why the process is similar to aging. I know that's all fanwank, but it fits far better with what preceded it.

I mean, we're not talking about real creatures here, so we don't need to even know exactly how it works. What we do know is that the process rapidly ages the subject and then kills them. I'm suggesting that whatever it is about the process disrupts our life functions in some physical, observable way. So, the super scientists with their super scientific city can use their super science smarts to figure out what it is that disrupts our lifeforce, and find some way to allow the feeding to occur without the disruption.

I do feel like someone is going to bring up ascension, which I haven't forgotten, but that is a complex process that involves the mind being transferred to a different state of being. I don't think it's controversial to say that it is meant to be at least in part, technologically based. Not magic. It just looks like it. That's honestly the epitome of Stargate, Clarke's Third Law; The Series.

I get that, but counterpoint, this is a series where "Pure Energy" "Energy being" and "Higher Planes of Existence" exist. It's a setting where if you're zen enough you can literally get super powers and eventually become a magical being that low-key warps reality.

So ya know, I don't exactly put "Lifeforce" beyond the series. Like Dr. Beckett says "We don't quite fully understand how Wraith Feeding works". What's Lifeforce? Something the Wraiths take that the Atlantis Expedition can't measure. Like Ascension Magic and the like.

[Beastro]

this is why I said it wouldn't magically solve everything.

Sadly, magically solving everything is what Stargate SG1 and Atlantis began to rely on more and more and more as time goes on.

I had to roll my eyes over the episode(s) when the Jaffa were suddenly all freed and trying to get along as a united group, as if it the latter would happen at once and they'd even want to associate with each other.

[Freeverse]

Even if there was a way to reduce the need to feed for speed most people probably wouldn't be down for some chest sucking especially if it was going to take away their life force even partially in particular the people of the Pegasus galaxy who have been moo'ing for the Wraith for centuries. To give peace a chance it would need to be voluntary and I doubt many would be selfless enough to literally give up life and I don't think its a morally dubious thing to not want to do.

All other things being equal, one person losing a year so that another person can gain two is a net positive. I['m not judging anyone who wouldn't make the choice to do that. Of course, this is actually me compromising my idea to show that even if what I suggested weren't possible (and again, what is and isn't possible is entirely up to the writers), there could still be at least some support for peace.

My point about "vampire media" was not to make a "REAL vampires" point but to allude to the trend in vampire media where people, especially nubile young women, want to be drained like a juice box by the vampires, there is some erotic pleasure in the act that it becomes like a "death by snu-snu" sort of thing for them. Most people IRL or even in a somewhat more realistic tv show are probably not going to be like some busty vampire victim throwing themselves at the Wraith to get their lifeforce taken, in a somewhat realistic setting most people are going to be thinking thats hot. Maybe some Twilight and Anne Rice fans, Team Edward fans are going to be disappointed when there is no space werewolves (that I recall).

I think they tried that once in the show to make it seem like getting the suck was fun or addictive with Ronan getting addicted to feeding or something but for the most part it seems like a horrific painful and dehumanizing act even when it doesn't kill. I think the Wraith not needing to kill would be like some tall aliens showing up with a book "To Serve Man" but asking everyone to donate a chunk of their thigh to make human tendies for alien NEETs, still wouldn't be alot of volunteers especially if it was after kidnapping some people to make into meals.

I don't think it matters to the Wraith how sexy their food is. Also, Anne Rice mostly wrote about sexy dudes getting their blood sucked by sexy vampire dudes. And if we're talking realistic tv shows, then I direct you to True Blood, a world in which there is an affordable blood substitute that vampires can live off of, but there are still people willing to be fed on for a multitude of reasons, because in the real world, people are complicated.

Now, I do think that the Atlantis team, having fought with the Wraith for a few years, would not be into helping out the Wraith in such a personal way, but I'm really not trying to prove anything about how the actual story goes in the show. I'm only saying that it could have gone a different way, if it had been written differently.

Momentarily ignoring the "Wraith are evil" thing that was my point, it still doesn't solve the Wraith issue compared to the potential other solutions. Dialing back their need to feed to where they only gotta kill far less if at all still keeps the humans as cattle for the Wraith even if the Wraith weren't evil. They still would act as parasites feeding off of people, forcing them to serve them so they can get their McHuman meals even if they weren't "bow before me". Its still keeping people enslaved even if it was a more benign slavery.

Well, either solution has to be paired with gaining enough military power to make assaults against human populations too risky for the Wraith to bother with. If humanity is protected, but still something they need to survive, then the power dynamic shifts, and that's when peace becomes possible, but only if we don't need to sacrifice human lives. Well, there are two ways that this can happen - either the Wraith don't need those sacrifices because they've changed to just not need to feed on us, or humanity enables a feeding process that doesn't require that sacrifice.

Now, if the Wraith don't need humans to feed on, then the only solution is to just keep up that military presence and defend against any future incursions. But if the Wraith still need to feed on humans, and we have that protection in place, then humanity has something they not only need to live, but can't get anywhere else. At that point, the fact that they need to feed on humans becomes a powerful bargaining chip.

So no, I wasn't thinking of allowing the slavery to continue, and I don't think that the only reason the existing power dynamic wasn't peaceful was the culling. Tyranny is never peaceful, so regardless of whether the Wraith change or humanity changes, step one is to remove their iron grip from the Pegasus galaxy. But once they are no longer in power, there is still a question of whether or not peace is possible.

But yeah, the Wraith are evil. Maybe its the result of their need to feed or maybe its just a natural personality issue but they are. To solve the problem of the Wraith the Wraith need to change, they are the problem. Removing their need to feed means that while they might still be evil the biggest reason for it is gone, they might still want to enslave or dominate people but it won't be something they HAVE to do. Peace in some form could be achieved even if its a Go'uld sort of peace where most are wiped out other then the few who reject being evil but the possibility is still there. No peace can be achieved if they remain vampires because even if they weren't evil they still have zero choice, its literally eat or die same as everyone else.

Though I definitely agree it would have been far more interesting to have the Wraith less pure evil. As I alluded to in another post I think it would have been interesting to see other sides of the Wraith, some that aren't so evil, some that are fairly benign if not symbiotic towards humans. Would make things more interesting if the Wraith weren't just completely "eat and kill", that some were their version of PETA (in concept, if they really were they'd kill far more humans then the regular Wraith).

I'm just going to repeat my main point again, so I can be super crystal clear. When I say that I think humans could change instead of the wraith, and that would solve a problem, the specific problem I am talking about, is the simple biological fact that wraith have to kill humans to survive.

There are a large number of other factors at play, but if we could feed the wraith without losing "lifeforce", that one factor could be eliminated in a way that, rather than reducing the agency of one group, increases the agency of the other.




... also, the opposite of "modify wraith to not be able to feed on humans" is not "modify humans so they can't be fed upon by wraith" it's the same thing from the opposite direction. only half of it is opposite. I'll let the rest of my arguments go but I'll die on this hill.